2 Grosvenor Road, Douglas

Someone had sprayed this Victorian house with an acrylic coating. All of it had to come off.

Acrylic paint forms a film. On a modern wall that is fine. On a building of this age it is not, because the wall has to breathe — moisture moves through the structure and evaporates off the face. Seal the face with a plastic film and the moisture has nowhere to go. It sits in the wall, and sooner or later it pushes the coating off. That is exactly what had happened here. The coatings were completely unsuitable, they had failed, and they needed removing in full before anyone could think about a finish.

Taking the old coating off

The paint removal was carried out by Building Conservation (Isle of Man), using KEIM paint stripper alongside a Thermatech STS7M high pressure steam cleaner. The stripper softens the film and the steam lifts it, and the whole point of working that way is that the substrate underneath comes through it intact. There is no sense saving the wall from a bad coating and damaging it in the process.

Building it back up

Structural repairs came first. Then KEIM Contact Plus, a high build mineral paint, went on to assist and equalise the surfaces — on an old elevation that has been stripped, nothing is uniform, and the finish needs something consistent to sit on. Over that came the final coats of KEIM Soldalit-ME.

Soldalit-ME is a mineral paint rather than a plastic one. Instead of drying as a skin on top of the surface it bonds with the surface, and it stays open enough for moisture to pass out through it. In other words it does the opposite of what had been sprayed on before. That is why it is the sort of thing specified on older and conservation-grade buildings, and it is why the finish holds up rather than blowing off in a few winters.

The specifier was Lightfast Limited. The decorative finishes were completed by Venetian Plaster Company Ltd. The resulting high quality finish looks great and will last for many years to come.